Harvey’s
discovery that blood circulates is a landmark in the history of medical
knowledge. Harvey explained that the idea occurred to him because he considered
the human body as a micro-unit of the universe. He saw the planets in the
universe were in motion. Therefore, he assumed that the blood in the body too
should be in motion. Sri Aurobindo says that during the Vedic period man lived
in harmony with Nature. To him, the Spirit and Nature were one. Buddhism
preached the renunciation of life and conquered the whole of India and later a
greater part of Asia. India gave up Buddhism but its basic tenet of
renunciation was from that time accepted by almost all schools of Indian yoga. Sri
Aurobindo further says that Man must regain that unity between Spirit and
Nature, but at the level of Supermind. Harvey’s view of life was a view
of the whole. It led him to one significant discovery. We have now lost that
view.

Schumacher, a British economist, published a book in the 1970’s
pronouncing the idea of ’Economics as if people mattered.’ Economics,
considered on its own as economics for economics’ sake, will lead one
astray, away from the truth. The centre of economics is Money for the
monetarists. It is Man who created money. Money is there to serve man. Man
should be the centre of economics, not money. Science is a mental tool Man has
created so that it may serve him. Science is not the centre of life; nor can it
ever become one. Man is the centre of life. It is by a psychological
superstition that Man becomes a slave of money or science, both of which are
his own creations. Science pursued for its own sake has led to several
wonderful technologies. They have generated pollution, assuring that our future
generations have no place to live in. The UN took initiative to constitute an
International Commission to study pollution. As a result, now we realise that
science is a part and society is a whole.

To pursue the part for its own sake is not the highest wisdom we have inherited
either from Aristotle or from the Vedic seers. Harvey lived in the 17th
century. He was a physician to James I and Charles I. Though he lived three
hundred years ago, his sense of science was a sense of the whole. It is not
only money and science that must serve man. Yoga seeks moksha, release of the
Spirit. Sri Aurobindo calls it the last act of selfishness of the soul. Yoga is
for the Man, or better still, for the Spirit. That Spirit should flower in
life. So, He said ’All life is yoga’. His Integral yoga says the
Spirit should evolve in Life and make earth heaven. It is an approach which
considers Man as a whole, an integrated whole, a whole of which the Divine is
the centre.